This is a great plu­gin, but it took a bit of work get­ting it installed.

Install VC2.5u4.  If you are upgrad­ing, and have not installed u4 yet, stop the “VMware Infra­struc­ture Web Access” ser­vice first.  Upgrade, then start the “VMware Infra­struc­ture Web Access” ser­vice.  Not doing this can cause you prob­lems.  This may be fixed by this VMware KB arti­cle.

Down­load and install Java JDK 1.6

Make sure to add the Java exe­cuta­bles direc­tory to your path (C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_12\bin\ in the case of my JDK.)  Later updates will use a dif­fer­ent path.  If you have an ear­lier ver­sion installed, and you need to keep the older ver­sion, type the fol­low­ing in a com­mand window

set path=C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_11\bin\;%path%

Cre­ate  a Sys­tem Vari­able (not User) called JAVA_HOME, with a value of C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_12. This is essen­tially the top level Java Directory.

Log out and back in to let your ses­sion pick up the new user variables.

In your file browser, find the per­fCharts direc­tory.  This will be the same folder you installed VC2.5u4 from, under \vpx\perfCharts.  Open a com­mand win­dow, and change to this direc­tory.  In the same com­mand win­dow run

install.bat

It’s a huge secu­rity hole, but I couldn’t find another way to do it.

Once that’s done, start Vir­tual Cen­ter and click on the a host.  You should see a Per­for­mance Overview tab.  If you don’t, check that the plu­gin is installed (Plu­g­ins -> Man­age Plu­g­ins -> Installed.)

Every­thing worked as expected, but I got this error in the Per­for­mance Overview win­dow
“STATs Report ser­vice inter­nal error Mes­sage: STATs Report appli­ca­tion ini­tial­iza­tion is not com­pleted successfully.”

To solve this, you need to con­fig­ure the built in MSDE data­base to accept TCP/IP as a pro­to­col.  Assum­ing your MSDE is on the same machine as your VC, start the SQL Con­fig­u­ra­tion Manager —

Start > Pro­grams > Microsoft SQL Server 2005 > Con­fig­u­ra­tion Tools > SQL Server Con­fig­u­ra­tion Man­ager.

SQL Server 2005 Net­work Con­fig­u­ra­tion -> Pro­to­cols for SQLEXP_VIM -> TCP/IP

Yes for Enabled and Yes for Lis­ten All

Restart the fol­low­ing ser­vices in order, or reboot

SQL Server (SQLEXP_VIM)
SQL Browser (Make sure it has either an auto­matic or man­ual start
VMware Infra­struc­ture Web Access